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of using our present system of weights and measures, with "our long and short tons, our barrels of 200, 280, 300 or 400 lbs, our pounds avoirdupois and our pounds Troy, our bushels of a dozen different weights, and our gallons of several incomprehensible kinds"; but the disadvantages of this system have been partly avoided in many cases by giving the statistics in metric measures as well as in our own.

The question of the cost of production has been given especial prominence in this volume, with a view to showing the reduction in the cost of the crude products. To use the words of the editor: "The itemization of cost is the first essential step in securing economy in producing any article, and the history of every country and of every industry has shown that prosperity, whether national, industrial, or individual, is, in a general way, inversely proportional to the cost of supplying the rest of the world with what one produces." These reductions are in no way dependent on the reduction of wages. On the contrary, many of the mining industries where the greatest reduction in cost of production has been accomplished, are carried on with high priced labor; and in many other cases, where the wages are not high, the condition of the wage-earners has been greatly improved. The reduction in cost of production has been entirely brought about by improvements in mining machinery, by a more thorough understanding of the nature of the deposits to be worked, and by more intelligent management and labor. The reduction in cost of production is nowhere better seen than in the materials most necessary to our welfare. For instance, coal can in some cases be carried by rail for 400 miles and delivered on board vessels for from $2 to $2.25 per ton, and yet the mine owners and railroads make dividends; some of the manufacturing establishments in Western Pennsylvania obtain coal at from 60 to 75 cents per ton at their works; hard gold-bearing quartz can be crushed, washed and 95 per cent. of the gold saved on the plates for $1.25 per ton; high grade Bessemer iron ore can be mined, handled, shipped and delivered a thousand miles from the point of production for less than $4.00 per ton. All these figures seem almost incredible until one investigates the various devices which the ingenuity and better education of those engaged in the industry have invented for reducing the expenses of production.

The former annual statistical numbers of the Engineering and Mining Journal were excellent in all they undertook, but the present